


the more things change

by verity



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Appalachia, Cougars, Family, Future Fic, M/M, Soul Bond, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:52:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I—this is so weird," Stiles says, palms falling open at his sides. "This is like the Twilight Zone, Jamie said you're an <i>accountant</i>."</p><p>"There's nothing wrong with accounting," Derek says. "You live in <i>Kentucky</i>."</p><p>"There's nothing wrong with Kentucky," Stiles snaps. His face stays stern for a moment before he starts laughing. "God, this is just—you're just the same."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the more things change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_rocket_frost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_rocket_frost/gifts).



> For my best bro Ashe, with love.
> 
> Thanks to Ashe, Clio, peardita, betp, and languisity for help/encouragement/enabling!
> 
>  
> 
> (Erica and Boyd are alive because I feel like it.)

There's a black cougar in the driveway.

Derek knows all about black cougars, thanks to Laura's obsession with cryptozoology and pseudoscience specials on the History Channel. His niece is five and Cora lets her get away with murder. For the last year, Rachel's been reading her stories out of John Peel at bedtime, and there's a drawing of the Moth Man on the fridge at home right now. So he's dead certain that the animal in front of him is a black puma, what with the piercing stare and tell-tale pale undercoat.

The cougar strolls up to Derek's rented SUV, gives him a serious side-eye through the passenger window, and lopes off into the woods.

—

"Amanda's getting married," Cora said. "Congrats, you're going."

Derek was sitting on her couch, flicking through a copy of _Highlights for Kids_ while he waited for the girls to get ready so he could take them to ballet class. "Amanda?"

Cora tossed the invitation at him; it him square in the nose. "My roommate freshman year? Amanda Saunders?"

"Ah," Derek said. Cora had graduated from college a decade ago; the last time he'd seen Amanda was at Cora and Rachel's wedding a few years later. He had a vague impression of blonde curls and a strong accent.

"She's the alpha of her pack now," Cora said. "I'd go, but it's in June—"

Derek picked up the invitation warily. June 16—basically on top of Rachel's due date— "In _Kentucky_?"

"Like I said," Cora said, giving him an alpha-red glare. "You're going."

—

Derek has time to look up black cougars— _melanistic_ cougars, fine, Wikipedia—and watch a few dubious shaky-cam videos on YouTube before a pickup pulls up next to him in the driveway. 

"You must be Derek Hale," the driver says as she climbs out of the truck. She has dyed auburn hair up in curlers and she's wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. "Come inside, have a drink."

Derek's not afraid of the cougar. He's a werewolf, and it's a—right. "Sure," he says, gingerly opening the door of his SUV. "You're Emissary Monroe?"

"Jamie," she says. "And I'll call you Derek, no reason to be fancy."

Inside, Jamie has Derek drop his messenger bag by the couch and leads him down the hallway and up half a flight of stairs to the kitchen. The house is a split-level with wood paneling downstairs and faded flowered wallpaper upstairs and a thin sprinkling of cat hair on everything but the couch, which seems to have been recently vacuumed. Everything smells like sage and cat and Jamie, and someone else, too—a scent that's almost but not quite familiar, makes Derek's nose crinkle. 

"Did you drive down from Lexington?" Jamie presses a can of store-brand root beer in his hand. "Mandy said you flew from New York—"

Derek cracks the tab on the room-temperature can and takes a sip. The root beer tastes like high-fructose corn syrup and aluminum. "It's—it's a nice drive," he says, though it isn't—he hasn't been behind the wheel of a car in years, since Cora followed in Laura's footsteps at NYU, and the roads here twist around mountains and wind through hollers, some of them so narrow that he had to pull to the side to allow traffic in the opposite direction to pass.

"You probably prayed the last fifty miles straight through," Jamie says.

Derek has never said a prayer in his life. "A little?"

Jamie pats him on the shoulder. "You settle in, take a nap. My cousin'll be up for work in a little, but he usually goes out the back, shouldn't disturb you."

Derek can't help but eyeing the clock; it's almost noon. "No problem," he says.

"We own a bar," Jamie says. "I don't take my curlers out 'til one."

"Sounds nice," Derek says. He's an accountant at a firm in midtown.

Jamie grins at him. "You come into town later, have a beer on me, all right? The bar's on Main, can't miss it."

—

Derek wakes up to one cat dozing on his sternum and another peering at him from the windowsill above the couch with skeptical green eyes. They both have shiny black coats: Derek is beginning to sense a theme. 

The bathroom down the hall is clean, but cluttered with decades-old _National Geographic_ s. Derek has to toe a stack back against the wall to sit down on the toilet and move another to the floor so he doesn't drench it when he turns on the sink. At least there's a path to the shower for later. Derek neatens his hair in the mirror—he's forty and already going gray—pulls on a v-neck that smells like the cedar blocks in his dresser at home and not the airport, and laces on his boots again. He's as ready to meet the world as he ever is.

Outside, the sun's still bright, though waning with the late afternoon. The shrieking of birds rends the air, and the smells around him are just as pungent: dying grass, car exhaust, a sharp whiff of chlorine from the above-ground pool next door. Derek's used to city grunge and the musk of too many bodies pressed together, or the rich, woodsy air of the land where the pack runs upstate; he's spent more than a decade away from everything in between. It smells like cat out here, same as it does in the house. Derek touches the siding of the house, which makes him feel like he's a kid again, pissing on the bushes by the back door to make a point.

There's no sign of the cougar at all.

—

"You made it," Jamie says, smiling him when Derek slides onto a stool at the bar. "What's your poison?"

Derek eyes the beers on tap. "What do you have bottled?"

Jamie slides him a menu over the scarred bar top. "We keep the ales warm like God intended." After a moment, she adds, "We've got the good stuff, too, if you fancy a walk on the wild side."

"Newcastle's fine," Derek says. The closest he gets to the wild side these days is extra-spicy Mexican food. "A burger, too, if you don't mind."

The bar is quiet this early in the day—a couple sitting in one of the booths in back, an older man nursing a pint and reading a library book at the end of the bar. Behind the bar, there's just Jamie, who plunks an open bottle and a glass in front of him. "On the house, since Days Inn ran out of room and you're on our couch and all."

Derek's pleasantly surprised to find the bottle cool, but not room-temperature. "Thanks," he says, tilting the glass as he pours. "That's—it's kind of you, to put me up."

Jamie opens her mouth to say something, but the door to the kitchen swings open and she looks over her shoulder at the man coming through with Derek's food. He's tall, broad-shouldered, unruly hair tipping into his eyes. Derek doesn't recognize him until Jamie says, "Stiles, this is—"

"Holy shit," Stiles says, fumbling Derek's fries.

—

Cora's talked to Scott a few times, but they were both small packs on opposite sides of the country; the power Derek gave Cora didn't make an alliance worthwhile. They probably exchange Christmas cards, but it's not like Derek goes through Cora and Rachel's mail. For Derek, there's been radio silence. He saw Lydia once in on the subway a few years ago, maybe; if it was her, she didn't bother to say anything, just rode the D down from Columbus Circle to West 4th at the opposite end of the car with her headphones on, doing her best to ignore the mariachi band and benches of strangers that separated them. Derek lost sight of her when they got off the train and he headed upstairs to transfer to the E.

"Is Derek one of your internet friends?" Jamie raises an eyebrow. "He cleans up nice."

Stiles frowns at her and sets the basket of fries in front of Derek. "I know people who aren't from the internet." The ubiquitous nowhere accent of California has slowed down; there's something different about the vowels.

"Scott?" Derek says.

"Oh, you know _Scott_ ," Jamie says, eyeing Derek with real interest. "You two must go way back, then."

"It's been a while," Stiles says.

Derek is abruptly conscious of his salt-and-pepper hair, his soft middle, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth. The survival-sculpted body he had then is long gone, and the months of alpha bulk are barely a memory. "I—it's good to see you?"

Stiles inhales, shoulders straightening. "Yeah. I should—um—" He jerks his thumb toward the kitchen.

"Of course," Derek says.

—

Amanda's cousins spill into the bar an hour later—he recognizes them from the photos on Facebook—with Amanda and her fiance trailing in her wake. "Derek!" Amanda says, throwing her arms around him. "You got _old_."

"Wow," Jamie says, leaning over the bar. "Way to greet a man."

"Hush, he's practically family." Amanda grins at him. "If his sister were here, she'd be holding my train."

One of the women with her rolls her eyes. "Oh, I don't know about that."

The round of introductions that follows keeps breaking to include new arrivals, although it's kept short because Derek's the only newcomer. Amanda's brother Jake turns out to be an accountant, too, although he does bookkeeping instead of internal auditing, so Derek gets away with talking shop for most of the evening. There's no mention of the supernatural: it could be an ordinary awkward night out with Cora's coworkers, complete with drunken dart-throwing in the back. 

Amanda slides onto the stool next to him towards the end of the night. "Thanks for coming," she says.

"Cora would be here if she could," Derek says, thumbing through the condensation on his glass. "I just—"

"It's hard to keep people from outside," Amanda says. "When you're like—we are."

Derek can't help but glance over at the swinging door to the kitchen; he's always had easy tells. "Yeah," he says. "I know what you mean."

—

Dutifully, Derek steps outside the bar at 9 to check in. The gust of air conditioning that follows him dissipates quickly—it's hot and sticky out even though the sun's dipped below the horizon. "Hey, you," Cora says when she answers the phone. "You're still alive."

"I texted you when I landed," Derek says. "I texted you when I got here."

" _You_ went to a bar with _Amanda_ ," Cora says.

Derek peeks back through the glass on the door, where Amanda's moved on to doing shots of Jaegar and mistletoe with her sister Claire. "Fair enough. How's—"

"No sign of Hale Junior so far." Cora sighs. "I have someone who wants to say hello to you, though."

Laura's voice is slow and sleepy when she comes on the line. "Uncle Derek?"

"Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" Derek says, leaning back against the wall of the building.

"I waited up," Laura says. "Mama said you'd call. You're _late_."

"I'm sorry, baby." Derek can't help it; his niece turns him into a marshmallow, not that there's much toughness left in him these days. "I'll call earlier tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," she says grudgingly.

They chat about her day at school for another minute before she hands the phone back to Cora. "Come home soon," she says. "This pack is going to collapse without you. Rachel had to make lunch for everyone today, and she spent all night watching bento box videos on YouTube—"

"Shut _up_ ," Rachel says in the background.

Maybe they're a little co-dependent—the pack is eight of them in a brownstone in Brooklyn that was split up into apartments years ago, Rachel and Cora and Laura on the ground floor, Erica and Boyd and Nina and Alicia on the second, Derek crammed into the attic—but Derek doesn't mind. He put up with kids spitting up on him for years, then toddler tantrums with fangs and claws, and now an endless round of ballet classes and piano lessons and soccer games, but everything in his life is saturated with the scent of them, the scent of pack.

Derek lingers outside for a few minutes after he ends the call, watching the lights wink out at the other end of the street as the liquor store and pharmacy lock up for the night. A few cars go by, but the town is going to sleep around him, winding down for the night.

"Hey," Stiles says, closing the door behind him.

—

The last time Derek saw Stiles was on his way out of town with Cora. They went into the grocery store for chips, bottles of Coke, granola bars—road trip food. Stiles was in the back, pulling out a few half-gallons of skim milk so he could get at the ones with the farthest expiration date in the back. He was wearing a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows; he looked tired. Derek didn't say anything, just turned on his heel and went to talk Cora out of buying jarred salsa that wouldn't fit in the cup holders of the car. They didn't need any milk.

Now Stiles is bright-eyed, cheeks pink from sun; he smells like cooking oil. "I didn't expect to see you here," he says. "You're—"

"I'm here for the wedding," Derek says.

"I _know_ that." Stiles runs a hand through his messy hair; the gesture is so familiar that it hits Derek like the punch in the gut. "I just—you know Amanda, I guess? Or Steve?"

Derek wraps his arms around himself, stares out at the quiet street. "Amanda and Cora were roommates at NYU. Cora's wife is due tomorrow, so she couldn't be here, but she didn't want—"

"Ah," Stiles says.

"Cora's my alpha," Derek says, because it's somehow important to him that Stiles gets it, that he knows that whatever Derek was when they knew each other—Derek's not anymore. "I'm here for our pack."

When he looks over at Stiles, Stiles's brow has wrinkled—and there are wrinkles starting there when it smoothes, it's impossible how much time has passed—and he's tilted his head while he eyes Derek appraisingly. "I—this is so weird," Stiles says, palms falling open at his sides. "This is like the Twilight Zone, Jamie said you're an _accountant_."

"There's nothing wrong with accounting," Derek says. "You live in _Kentucky_."

"There's nothing wrong with Kentucky," Stiles snaps. His face stays stern for a moment before he starts laughing. "God, this is just—you're just the same."

Derek doesn't feel the same. He feels a lot like a marshmallow who's never going to get a corner office. "You seem happy," he ventures.

Stiles shrugs, glances down the street the same way Derek's been looking, tilts back his head until he's looking past the storefronts up into the mountains. "I like it here," he says. "It grew on me."

—

Amanda and her family seem set on closing the place down, but they don't give Derek too much shit for ducking out early. "You're smart," Steve says, clapping him on the back. "I don't try to drink my wife under the table."

"Not your wife yet!" Amanda sings out from the bar.

Steve grins at her. "My alpha," he says, lifting his bottle of Rolling Rock in acknowledgment.

Derek gets out of there when someone cues up "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" on the jukebox and everyone starts singing along. Jamie waves goodbye to him as she belts out the chorus. Yeah, Derek is never going to be drunk enough for that.

He drives back to the house slowly with the brights on, cautious of the road's twists and turns, and makes it to Jamie's unscathed. Then he lets himself into the house and heads upstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

The black cougar is drinking out of the cats' water bowl.

Derek lives in Brooklyn. He doesn't have any pets. Domesticated cats are usually indifferent to him. Wild animals are some combination of afraid, unamused, and territorial. A unicorn once tried to gut him, but that was years ago. He chaperoned Laura and Alicia's class field trip to the zoo.

The cougar looks up at him and… narrows its eyes. It—he—smells like cat, and also vaguely of raw meat, the forest floor, bird shit. He sniffs at Derek pointedly and goes back to drinking; Derek backs slowly away for a moment before he feels like an idiot and steps back into the room. He gets a drinking glass out of the cupboard and fills it with water from the Brita pitcher in the fridge.

One of the black cats comes up to him and butts her head against his leg before she goes over and does the same thing to the cougar.

Derek goes to bed.

—

"So I hear you met Sam," Stiles says in the morning.

Derek is 90% not awake. He is—was—sleeping on the couch in his boxers and a t-shirt with the window unit going full blast, dreaming about being in an arctic paradise and not Kentucky in the summer. Now Stiles is sitting down on the floor across from him, one cat draped around his neck, another climbing into his lap as soon as he's settled enough not to disturb her. The third trots over and curls up by Stiles's side.

"Is that one of Amanda's cousins?" Derek says. It comes out more like "Is 'manda cous'?"

Stiles sighs. "No, _Sam_." He pauses. "The cougar?"

"That's his name?" Derek says.

"Yeah, like the eagle?" Stiles says. "He likes it better than his cougar one."

There is nothing whatsoever about Sam the Cougar that reminds Derek of Sam the Eagle. "Am I awake?"

Stiles studies him carefully and says, "I'm not sure."

Derek goes back to sleep.

—

After he wakes up the second time, enough to get out of bed, Derek heads upstairs to forage for breakfast. He ends up eating cereal at the table in the kitchen while Stiles does the crossword in the paper and Sam eats raw beef off a paper plate on the ground. "Is Sam your—familiar?" Derek asks.

"Emissaries don't have familiars," Stiles says. "And I'm not an emissary until Jamie retires. What's a ten-letter word for bicycle?"

Derek swallows a mouthful of Kix and whole milk. "Try 'velocipede."

Stiles inks it in with a ballpoint pen. "Thanks," he says. "Sam's my—we're bonded."

"Bonded," Derek says slowly.

"It was an accident," Stiles says. "Someone told me not to pet any of the cougar cubs, it was like they didn't know me or something."

"Jamie?" Derek says.

There's a pause before Stiles says, "She knows better now."

Sam puts his head in Stiles's lap and growls. Now that Derek's had more time to observe him, he can tell that there's something different about Sam, above and beyond the part where Sam is a mythical creature beloved by cryptozoologists and drunk people with 2.0 megapixel cameraphones. There's an uncanny degree of intelligence lurking behind Sam's baleful stares, a schooled politeness about the way he devours a hunk of raw meat.

Stiles reaches down to scratch Sam behind the ears. "Shut up unless you know a four-letter word for baby carriage," he says to Sam.

—

"So this is… working out for you?" Derek says later, while Stiles is trashing the paper plate and half-assedly wiping up the spillover with Windex and paper towel. "The whole—bonding thing."

Stiles shrugs; Sam, beside him, rolls his shoulders in an eerie show of mimicry. "No one understands our love," he says. "Last month was our tin anniversary and Amanda just gave us a six-pack of PBR."

"Sam's… not a beer person?" Derek says.

"He likes IPAs," Stiles says as he shoves the Windex back into the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.

—

Amanda's bachelorette party is at Stiles and Jamie's bar. "You're my surrogate Cora," Amanda explained. "Also, you don't want to hang out with the boys. They're just going to watch the last season of _The Deadliest Catch_ and then run around the woods all night."

"I see enough of the Discovery Channel," Derek concedes, which is how he ends up wearing a hot pink feather boa while Stiles mixes them rounds of increasingly improbably-colored cocktails. He keeps Derek's mistletoe-free, but werewolf metabolism only goes so far. By the fifth round, Derek's feeling a little buzzed, keeps bumping shoulders companionably with Jamie when she shifts on the stool next to him.

"Pink looks good on you," Stiles says after he snaps a photo for Derek to send to Cora. There's a thick sheen of glitter smeared across Stiles's cheekbones, thinning out over the rest of his face until it's just a faint dusting spilling down his throat and beneath his collar, only to sparkle again on his arms. "I always wondered how you'd turn out, if you'd start looking normal or turn into, like, Helen Mirren."

Derek takes his phone back. "Is that a compliment?"

"If you insult Helen Mirren I'll gut you!" Amanda's sister calls from the end of the bar.

"Helen Mirren is like good bourbon," Stiles says, canting his hips as he leans against the bar. "Better every fucking year."

Stiles has aged like that. Stiles was—oh, he was pretty, but Derek didn't—Stiles was so _young_ , then, back in Beacon Hills, and Derek didn't look at any of them like that. Derek doesn't really look at anybody like that, even now, except Stiles—he's all muscle beneath his t-shirt, and Derek can imagine the grooves of his hips, the way it would feel to—

"Oh, you _like_ him," Jamie says, raising an eyebrow at Derek. She manages to keep her voice low enough that Stiles, moving to the end of the bar to refill someone's glass, doesn't seem to hear.

Derek flushes and stares at the bottom of his glass. There's a cherry in there—this was a tequila sunrise, probably. "I—"

Jamie snorts. "Honey, you go right ahead. That boy needs some attention."

"He's not a boy," Derek says reflexively.

"Good, you figured that out," she says, patting him on the shoulder. "Stiles—"

Stiles puts a glass of water in front of her. "Casting aspersions on my character?" he says lightly, but the look he gives her is serious.

"No," Derek says. "She's—"

Jamie rattles the empty bowl in front of her. "I want more peanuts," she says. "Hop to it."

—

So, Derek waits around as Stiles and Jamie—sobered up for the most part, now—close down the bar, no big deal. He left the SUV at the house and rode into town with Jamie, so he does need a ride back, and it would have been out of the way for—

 _I know I said the baby wasn't coming out any time soon_ , Cora's message says. _I lied_.

And then there's a picture of Rachel and Laura and the baby. The baby looks like a baby, redfaced and bald, swaddled in a green blanket and tucked against Rachel's chest. His name is Nicholas. A new name. The first one in their family.

"Baby pictures!" Jamie says, peering over his shoulder. "Oh, that's a cute one. Stiles, come see."

There's a clang in the kitchen and then Stiles bounds through the double doors, bends down over Derek's other shoulder to look. He's so close that his cheek brushes against Derek's. "Wow, it's a baby," he says. "Is that—"

"The baby is Nick," Derek says. "That's my niece, Laura, and my sister-in-law, Rachel." His phone dings with another picture. "That's Erica and her daughter Alicia."

Stiles goes quiet and still. "Erica," he says after a moment. "Wow."

"Yeah," Derek says, turning his head, and Stiles is right there, and—

Jamie clears her throat. "I'm heading over to Amanda's for the night to make sure everybody downs some water, I don't want to mix up any hangover cures before the ceremony."

"You're going to have to take out your curlers two hours early," Stiles says, looking up. "What a tragedy."

"Jesus wept," Jamie says.

Stiles stays where he is until the door closes behind her, a warm press against Derek's back, "Just checking that we're on the same page here," he says into Derek's ear. "I've kind of wanted to fuck you into next year for half my life, and you're _here_ , and—"

"Are you cheating on your cougar?" Derek says, feeling guilty.

"Sam has a girlfriend," Stiles says, spinning Derek on his barstool. "If it makes you feel better, I'll put a sock on the door."

—

Stiles backs Derek right up against the bar, until the barstool is more of a suggestion under Derek's ass and what's keeping him upright is his tenuous purchase on the ground. Somehow, over the years, they've traded places: Derek may have claws and fangs, but he's hardly a predator, and Stiles is far from prey. Stiles doesn't kiss gently, doesn't do anything gently, rakes his fingers up Derek's back beneath his shirt. "I thought about this a lot, you know," he says to Derek between kisses. "I used to—I always thought you might come back, I thought—I used to jerk off, thinking about you, just—"

"Reality must be a disappointment," Derek says, trying to shove himself back onto the stool so he can get some friction against Stiles, even though rutting against Stiles through his jeans is hardly going to be kind on his aching dick.

Stiles reaches down and just _hoists_ Derek forward by the thighs, and Derek kind of wraps his leg around Stiles's waist and he's going to destroy his back like this, he's—"I can't fuck you here," Stiles whines. "Everyone will smell it, this is _unfair_."

Derek lets himself grind against Stiles for a few more seconds before he drops his legs and pushes Stiles gently back. "You can fuck me at home," he says. "In a bed, like normal people."

For a moment, Stiles just stares at him. "Reality is so far from a disappointment." 

—

The ride home isn't long, but it's torture. Derek can't think of any conversational topic that isn't, _this is weird, I'm old and boring, you live in Appalachia and you're spirit-married to a cougar, can we pull over to the side of the road so I can put my mouth on your dick_ and Stiles has his lips clamped shut, like he's trying to dam a flood of dirty talk that'll end up with them fucking in a ditch. That's fortunate, because Derek probably wouldn't care, he's pretty okay with any permutation of fucking at this point. 

Stiles drags him into the house by the wrist and they make it as far as the stairs before Derek says, "Can I blow you, can I—"

"Can you do it later?" Stiles says. "Unless you—do you know how much time I've spent thinking about your ass?"

"No, but you're going to tell me about it." Derek doesn't mean that as a come-on, just a statement of fact, but Stiles's mouth widens into a grin. They make out by the door for a while, Derek's hips shoving helplessly up against Stiles while Stiles fucks Derek's mouth with his tongue and gives him biting, stinging kisses that make Derek weak in the knees. It takes them a while to make it upstairs to Stiles's bedroom.

Where Sam is on the bed.

"No," Stiles says before Derek's boner can totally flee the scene. "We've talked about this. _Healthy boundaries._ "

Sam growls, but he gets off the bed and lumbers toward the door reluctantly.

"Deal with it!" Stiles shouts after him. "I am allowed to get some!"

—

That really should put Derek off, but it doesn't. Instead, he pushes them down onto Stiles's bed, maybe rolls around in the sheets a little more than necessary while he sucks bruising marks into Stiles's neck. So what if he's marking his territory.

" _Derek_ ," Stiles moans. "I'm not a werewolf, we're going to a _wedding_ tomorrow—"

Derek pulls off of Stiles's neck. "Do you have to be in any pictures?"

"Point," Stiles says.

They're both out of practice, Derek's not as limber as he used to be, but by now he's so worked up that he almost loses it when Stiles works a finger into him, cool and slick with lube. He does the breathing exercises he mastered when Cora and Rachel were working on baby 1.0 and that gets him through fingers two and three, and Stiles pushing into him. Derek's red everywhere, all down to his chest, tightening involuntarily around Stiles's dick every time Stiles presses a kiss to his neck. They're face to face, flush against against each other, Stiles bowed over Derek to kiss him and give himself room to finally, finally fist his long fingers around Derek's dick. "Stiles—" Derek chokes out before he comes embarassingly fast.

"Um," Stiles says before he closes his eyes and his swollen lips part as his hips stutter against Derek's.

—

"We should do that again," Stiles says.

Derek is half-asleep; he passed out for a few minutes there, came to when Stiles cuddled up to him after trashing the condom and wiping them up. "In the morning?" he says.

"After the reception," Stiles says. "We'll never get out of here if we do it in the morning."

"Mmm," Derek says.

—

They fuck in the shower in the morning, and they're barely on time. Derek has a hard time sitting on a wooden pew for an hour, but it's a small price to pay for Stiles leaning into him while Amanda and Steve walk together down the aisle. Sam, on Stiles's other side, even gives Derek a grudging nod when their eyes meet mid-service, as Amanda and Steve exchange vows in which Steve promises to love and obey and Amanda promises to love and protect.

At the reception, Derek shows everyone baby photos and texts Cora pictures of the cake, and manages to sneak out for a few minutes at the end and call Laura before bedtime.

"Sounds like you've got a nice life up there," Stiles says when Derek comes back in and lowers himself carefully onto the folding chair next to Stiles's. Across the table, Sam is working on his second plate of cake.

"I do," Derek says. "Doesn't mean I couldn't—visit."

"Something to think about," Stiles says, hand curling into Derek's beneath the table.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
